Should a link to the sitemap go on all pages of a site? I see a lot of people doing this but I don't understand the logic of it - at least from an seo point of view. If you link to the sitemap from all pages, doesnt that endow the sitemap with a lot of pr that could instead be passed on to pages you want to have the most rank like your product pages? For example, if you trying to direct internal pr to 5 or 6 main pages through other pages on your site such as articles, if you put a link to the sitemap on all pages, isnt that less page pr to pass to the main pages because it is one more link on those pages that gets the total page pr? Or do you get it back from the sitemap because all the pages are listed there? Does it cause the sitemap itself to rank highly - something undesirable or is the gain in pr simply sent back to the pages listed on the sitemap? From an seo standpoint, does it matter if you just link to it from the hompage or put it on all pages? Thanks.
I wouldn't obsess about infinitesimal amounts of PR passed or "leaked" through a site. Because visitors to your site can enter on any page, placing the site map on each page provides a great road map for surfers. Design web site navigation for web surfers - not internal PR. The real key to PR is to get backlinks to your main and internal pages to promote PR. All the great SERP's and PR in the world won't keep web surfers on your site if they can't quickly find topics of interest.
Hi HHi Golf Guy. I appreciate you taking the time to address my question. I think what you are saying makes a lot of sense. I just like to understand how things work so my question is really just to get a better understanding of the effect of site structure and distribution of pr. I do notice that many high ranking sites and well known seos (like the guy who does myweddingfavors.com) do put the sitemap on all pages. I've been using a method that recommends just linking to it from the homepage. So I'm confused on what to do. Let me ask you this. Say I have about 60 articles on my site related to the topic of my site. Where is the best place to put them? Should I list them all in a neat organized way on my sitemap? And then link to the sitemap on all my pages? I do realize that the real pr and rank increasing comes from outsides links coming in and that is where most of the focus should be - getting links - I just want to start with a site structure that maximizes my outside efforts.
Hi Tomsey, I'm not going to say that I know the best way of going about this from a SEO standpoint, but I will tell you what I like doing. On my homepages I like putting a full sitemap, I use Xenu to generate them. On all of the other pages on my site I like putting a "You are here" on the bottom with links to each section above where you are. For example, let's say your website is about golf, and you are looking at a page about ping putters you could have the following: You Are Here: Golf Site (linked) -> Clubs (linked) -> Putters (linked) -> Ping (linked) This is probably pretty obvious but my point in posting this is that you can get away with giving the user good navigation without going fot an all-out sitemap. But then again, what is one more internal link to your sitemap.
I have to use several sitemaps; due to the size of my site. But; it can work on smaller sites as well; if you do it right. I have several categories; and several - articles - for lack of a better term - under those categories; so here's how I set it up: Main sitemap - linked from all pages. On this sitemap I have links to all the category sitemaps; this page has descriptions as well. Category sitemaps contain links to all pages within that particular directory. So if I have a longjohn category; the table of contents page has a listing of all the articles about long johns (this page doesn't have descriptions although it probably should - I just don't have the mindpower): How to wash longjohns Should I hang my longjohns out in public? Why am I laughed at because I wear long johns? And on. I try not to repeat myself too much (ie longjohns), although sometimes I can't help it. Usually my rule of thumb is if I have 3 or more articles under a category I make a table of contents page, or "index" - along that line.
Thanks guys. Purely site structure wise... Lets say I have a simple 70 page site. One page is the index and 5 others are the main pages of the site. These are in nav menus on the side and the footer. Now I also have about 50 articles pages. It's the article pages that I'm not sure how to handle in order to make a site with a clear hiearchy that google seems to like. I've been listing the articles on "article pages" in sets of 20 and linking the article pages to the index page and also putting the article pages on the sitemap. The sitemap is linked to just from the home page. I'm beginning to suspect though that this is not the clearest hiearchy. It seems to me that the articles should be more incorporated into the site instead of just listed on article pages? Does that make sense? Would it be better to link the relevant articles to the 5 main pages (these are my money pages - they have the affiliate links on them)? Then, instead of just putting links to the articles on article pages, I could list eveything on the sitemap which would show the hiearcy - index then 1st of 5 pages then the articles attached to that page and then the next main page and the article attached to it etc. Lets say you have a 20 page site with 4 main pages - how would you organize it so that it made the best sense to google in terms of a very clear heiarchy? Thanks and sorry for being so longwinded. I'm somewhat new to this stuff.
Tomsey I use site maps as a quick reference for users to find topics or categories of interest. If a site map gets cluttered with too much text and links, then most users will quickly give up on your site and move to the next site. For example, when we have a client with a series of articles, our site map will have link text stating "Articles Index" followed by a short paragraph as to what type of articles they are. Now lets say that the client has two sets of articles. The first set is on "widgets" and the second set is on "gadgets". The site map would have one link as "Widget Articles" along with a short descriptive paragraph and another link as "Gadget Articles" with another descriptive paragraph. If both the widget and gadget articles are indexed on the same page the link would also include the bookmark tag to bring them to the correct area on the page when they clicked the link. I know that there are many webmasters that like to make their site maps as detailed as possible or have multiple site maps. If they feel that it works, that's great. My opinion is that your site map should be clean, and key topics should leap out of the page at your site visitors. The less complicated that you can keep the navigation structure, the better customer retention you will have. You can always put a site search box in a prominent spot on your site map page for the nitty-gritty searches. On the SEO side of things, placing every single page of your site on the site map(s) does not have significant impact on SE spiders. Topic or category pages with good anchor text are all that you need. By design, the spiders will find all of the sub pages, no matter how deep those pages are into your web site. Bottom line - make it easy for web surfers to quickly find their topics of interest. Use short paragraphs on your site map when needed. It will keep surfers from getting frustrated and jumping to your competitors web sites.
I'm with HHI Golf Guy: I'm one of those people who has a link to the site map (and to a "search this site" page and the main index page) on every page in the site -- the reason for this is that I want to do everything possible to make it easy for visitors to find the information they are seeking, i.e., it's visitor driven, not PR driven, which I think is how every site should be designed.